Information for Healthcare Professionals
The material introduced in this section details basic aspects of the physiopathology of snakebite envenomings, as well as guidelines to treat these envenomings. Clinical manifestations and alterations recorded in clinical laboratory tests of people who suffered an ophidic accident are divided in two main types: envenomings by snakes from the Viperidae family, and envenomings caused by snakes from the Elapidae family. There is a different antivenom (or antiophidic serum) for each one of these types of envenomings: polyvalent serum and anticoral serum, respectively.
This page includes three documents of relevance for health care professionals and students in the fields of Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, and Microbiology. Two publications are included on the subject of physiopathology and treatment of ophidic envenoming, another more general one, and a last one that delves deeper into the subject, which is a chapter published in a book of Medical Emergencies. It also includes an algorithm to diagnose these envenomings and their treatment with antiophidic serum. This algorithm can be printed and placed in Emergency Rooms in hospitals and health centers where it might be of use.
